It is not an Island.

I am stranded.

No desert island. No ship. No Open Water. Yet there are sea gulls. How very, very peculiar.

Do stories form to narratives? Do ending occur? Are changes always hopeful? If life a loop we continue to populate with linearity?

This stranded space is a little cold. And empty. Am I on white (Matrix-style), or on black (brooding, atmospheric, ghost-stories)?

There are ideas that shift across, manifesting themselves in IMAX format. Wordplay: letters that dance across your face and eyes; meaningless drivel. Where are we going/twirling/slipping/mindlessly sauntering (towards)? The direction is "Lost", the driver's a bit dense/heavy(and over populated). Where does this roller coaster ride end?

But there we go again: beginnings and endings; birth and death; repetitive linearity or cyclical rotation? No, we're not falling for the Levi-Straussian trap. Time is more complex in our minds, narratives are not linear or unidirectional. We are fleeing to unknown domains, known only to all of us.

But I'm stranded. Who are 'we'?

I'm not a product; don't box me.

You need a HDTV, the latest iPod, a couple of sports cars, and a suburban house to be even considered human. Oh, and work for a really big corporate company.

We are entangled in the roots of capitalism. Coca Cola banners spread across our altars, yet we remain unaware. We try to be happy through commercial produce; keeping up with 'progress' consumes our time and lives. What is this great aim that we are all heading towards? Who's directing this big embargo? And at what cost?

Responses are vague:
"That's the way the world works, deal with it."
"Does it matter? You need to survive."
"It's cultural. It's society, and it's bound to happen."
"Well if you don't like it, why do you stay in it?"

The latter, of course, is the most curious. Where else can I go? So-called 'development' or 'missionary' programs are giving people 'a better chance'- in other words, introducing people to the world of desire (not necessity). Indigenous groups around the world are given machetes, clothes and other sorts of foreign 'treats' to 'civilise' them. Development projects tell people that in order to be 'human', urban development and commercialism is essential. So-called human rights plummet for consumerist gain, whilst the poverty-stricken grow in numbers.

Yet, wherever we are, in our comfortable homes with a TV, newspapers and billboards, we are constantly told that everything is okay. That the lives we live are good, and that we should be grateful. Does gratitude mean not caring about the rest of the world? Does it mean that we impose our ideas on other individuals?

We see people shot down in Iraq, we hear of crises in Darfur, we read of famine in East Africa, and yet we do nothing. We sit, comfortable in our own homes, regurgitating the frivolous details of our shopping and disregarding the boxed and imagined reality. How can we be so apathetic, so lethargic, so narrow-minded? how can we continue to work for an ideal which has caused more problems than it has solved?

"Money makes the world go round." What is money? A medium of exchange, created by whom and for whom? Why are goods and services priced so differently and people paid so differently for the same work if the medium for exchange is supposedly objective? Why does a piece of paper have more value than any initiative? Why do we have to 'look' for work and 'apply' for jobs, when there is a necessity for them to be completed?

Money is not happiness. Money and Objects aren't God. People are not property. We have become slaves to a hyperreal capitalist goal.